We are waves on the shorelines.

We are living, thinking, feeling waves on the shorelines of the cosmic ocean, fantastically elegant collections of molecules whose atoms were forged in the smithies of long-dead stars over time spans too vast for limited beings such as we to grasp intuitively.

Matter that seems to us misleadingly solid flows together to form us, and then flows away to become part of something else. Not a single atom in our bodies now is the very same as those we were born with.

We are beings of mostly empty space on the level of atoms, whose particular arrangements of matter and energy allow us the privilege of understanding the universe as a part of it ourselves.

It is the universe comprehending itself, more or less, through our awareness, our curiosity, and our soaring imaginations — what is, what was, and what very well may be.